Harem of the Sundrum and the Witness Figg

Soft Abuse / Time-Lag;
2005

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At the local record store, the freak-folk section's gridlocked. It's a
fucking epidemic. Since Devendra Banhart shepherded his golden apples
onto one collection, indie rockers have had time to grow-out their
hair/grizzled beards and practice some Vashti Bunyan/John Fahey tablature. So,
unless you have a desire to purchase everything even vaguely arboreal
or finger-picky, separating the raw and the cooked can be
difficult.

A fresh breeze from Knoxville, Tennessee (for the time being, he
says), James Toth aka Wooden Wand plays somber folk with smoky,
chicken-coop ambiance. Sticking with the basics, his unadorned sound
consists of guitar and voice: Singing into your ear, he whispers and caws over splintery
strums. Now and again, his voice lifts
like a hillbilly choir or a candlelit revival presided over by
David Crosby. He mumbles. He exorcises and laments. He goes Bill Callahan on us.

Hardly a naive backwoodsman, ex-Golden Calves player Toth is the
leader of upstart Brooklyn (and elsewhere) free-folk vagabonds, the
Vanishing Voice. He also co-operates Polyamory Records with fellow
ex-Calve and current-Dead Machines tone bender Tovah O'Rourke, wife of
Wolf Eyes' John Olson. Regardless of Toth's experimental pedigree, Harem of the
Sundrum and the Witness Figg runs in a different direction than his
all-over-the-map work with the Vanishing Voice (though you can
hear hints of their thing in the opening flange-fest of loopy "Warn
Winch, Pts. 2-3"). That's the surprise and joy of this record:
Not just adept at improvisation, Toth proves a strong, subtle
songwriter.

The self-released cassette Harem of the Sundrum appeared last year,
but this is a longer, fuller set. Toth sites inspiration as Grace Slick, Gene
Clark, Fleetwood Mac, and John Phillips, but if you want it in laid
out in zeitgeist terms, it's way less quirky than Banhart, could be
compared to Wovenhand doing some California, blue-sky dreaming. It snaps and crackles: Once
in a good while, he has a strange Tom Petty pronunciation and conjures
Bastard Generals, but play it safe and drop lo-fidelity Roky
Erickson.

The pieces establish a doleful sort of inspiration. "Leave Your Perch..." is a downer with soft, Grateful Dead guitar
noodles bobbing over icy, shadowy strum and phaser humming like a
firefly. "Perch Modifier" explicitly
states some of the album's religious themes (God, angels, a bird
singing "weak, rejoice, the day is new") and Toth's connection to
landscape: "Look up to the clouds/ Do you ever look past your boots
and onto the ground?/ Do you ever think back to when you were very
small?/ That's when you didn't need to rule over all." The vocals
double for the last line and the guitar pickings grow intricate,
briefly, as if his heart's a-flutter.

A moderately upbeat spiritual, "Vengeance, Pt. 2" speaks of end times
(Toth is sure he'll see all his friends and so he has "nothing to
fear") and includes lovely barroom harmonizing for the curious, catchy
line: "Play your phonograph, it still makes baby laugh." "Sundrum Ladies" feels like Stranger Than
Paradise scored by M. Ward, focusing on the Louisiana sky, more babies,
and some ragged, jittery (but hushed) soloing.

Reminiscent of Pink Mountaintops' truck-stop lite-rock blues, "(Ask
a) Sufist Chef" imbibes in dancing skeletons, a blind magician ("he
mistook a lizard for a rabbit and scared the children senseless"), and
various "miraculous things." It ends with the refrain: "We should be
with God without attachment." Toth acts move-to-the-country Smog circa
Julius Caesar on "Spiritual Inmate" and rolls into wood-panelling falsetto on
"Eagle Claw", where things grow ominous over the chilled Nashville
skyline: "Don't let your time pass you by.../ Don't save your last
words 'til you die." But, weirdly, the song actually sparkles.

These lo-fi hymns succeed because they're highly listenable. The collecton's direct, unadorned, honest,
idiosyncratic. Like neo-folk's most interesting
players (Banhart, Ben Chasny, Joanna Newsom), Toth sounds more like his
precursors than his contemporaries, and very much like himself.
Timeless is a tough (even questionable) word to plunk down
on the present, but all things considered (and considered carefully),
Harem of the Sundrum and the Witness Figg should sound especially singular this
time next year, even if Toth goes and
gets himself a buzz cut.